I feel so stupid. I forgot to lock my car last night. This morning I woke up to a ransacked car. The thief got away with my GPS, a really outdated ipod nano that keeps crashing, and a bunch of change. So it's a lesson to me to remember to lock my car and not keep anything valuable in there.

It happens; I lost the truck's iPod that way. The iPod itself was hidden in a shipping envelope, but the white cord was snaking up to the stereo. The truck was out in the parking lot while I was having lunch with friends, and I think I left it unlocked when I ran out to drop some stuff inside and go back. Later, envelope, iPod and cord were all missing. I hope the thief wasn't expecting an iPhone, though. The truck gets cheap refurbished Nanos. The Nano in question was an elderly 3rd gen with a bad battery and a scratched display.

I feel so stupid. I forgot to lock my car last night. This morning I woke up to a ransacked car. The thief got away with my GPS, a really outdated ipod nano that keeps crashing, and a bunch of change. So it's a lesson to me to remember to lock my car and not keep anything valuable in there.

Are you sure you forgot to lock it? Some thieves can get into a car using methods that don't leave a lot of traces. I remember once telling a police officer that I must have left my car unlocked, then he showed me some *very* small scratches around the handle that showed where it had been jimmied.

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My cousin's memoir of love and loneliness while raising a child with multiple disabilities will be out on Amazon soon! Know the Night, by Maria Mutch, has been called "full of hope, light, and companionship for surviving the small hours of the night."

I'll confess. Time: This morning. I am rushing to leave for work and--bloody ehell!--I can't find my keys. *moans* I always put my keys on the counter next to the Filofax. Where the ehell are they? *gets more frantic* *foolishly but desperately asks cat for help* (receives none)

Five minutes later I decide the ehell with it and grab two sets of partial keys (a housekey by itself, duplicate car keys by themselves) out of a drawer. I rush off--only to get to work and find that in the bottom of my bag are ... my keys.

Many years ago I had a cat. If I called him, he would always come running.

One night I called him, nothing. I went outside to look for him, and there he was up against the house, kind of hidden in the shadows. He had a new little friend with him.

I was talking baby talk to him, telling him how nice it was that he had a new friend, when somewhere in the back of my mind a voice said, "I don't think his new cat friend should have a white stripe down his back".

The brain figured out long before the body did that this new friend was not a cat. I couldn't move fast enough to avoid both of us getting full on sprayed by a skunk.

Neither of us was very happy.

I do trapping of stray cats for the trap, spay neuter release program at out local shelter. Last week, set out the traps by the woods down the street from me..it was dark and storms were moving in. When I came back with the third trap to set, got all excited because I finally got the calico feral. So I move the traps to an area out of the elements and go home. At 1 am, while it is pouring, I walk down to see if I have got anything else. It is pitch black, pouring and veryvery dark..I tried my flashlight before I left and it was dead. Instead of changing batteries, I decide I can do without..altho my brain was screaming at me to change the batteries. After almost getting run down by a startled deer, that I didn't see (proving I do not have the ability to see in the darn dark) I walk towards the traps and get excited to see one was set off..looked like it was a small baby. So, of course, because I am obviously an idiot, I walk up, stick my face down and say "hey baby kitty." and that was when I noticed the stripe!!!!!! I still swear I levitated and did the run in place that cartoon characters do. Called my sister, who also traps, and she is laughing at me and says to release it. So I creep back over, release the back latch and flip that door down and ran. It came toddling out..right at me. So now, I look like a complete idiot because I am being chased by a baby skunk in the pouring rain at 1 am. That is when I discovered they don't spray at that young of an age. At the same time, I hear the other trap go off, walk over and it is a raccoon..again! At least he ran off when I released the latch instead of chasing me! I went home..soaked, out of breath..and changed the batteries in the flashlight.

A few tips for dealing with skunks in traps: Grab an old blanket or beach towel and drape it over the trap. The dark will calm them down (of course, you don't need to do this in the middle of the night). Talk to them quietly in a calm voice, pitching it lower than you would normally speak, especially for women. Then, pick up the trap and put it in the back of your car. No, I don't recommend this; I did it, though.* When you are ready to let Pepe Le Pew out, wrinkle the towel/blanket back so you can open the trap door. Back away slowly and let Pepe mosey out on his own time.

*I was trapping a family of 6 raccoons (Mama and 5 babies) in my urban back yard and relocating them to a wooded area and in the process, caught the skunk. I wanted to relocate it, too. I actually had less trouble with the skunk than some of the raccoons. The skunk left very quickly, on his own; I had to shake out some of the raccoons.

Last summer, the trap was set but the bait had been stripped by chipmunks, mice and ants. I hadn't bothered to trip the trap. I found a skunk in it one evening when I went out to the garden. I figure he'd been in there for at least 24 hours. I opened and propped open the door and walked away. He didn't move. So I figured he was close to death and went and got a can of cat food and some water. Put those in the trap. He still didn't move. So I shoved them farther in. Suddenly, I was looking at the back end of a skunk. So I told him he was on his own and backed out and went to work in the garden. I caught him running out of the corner of my eye so he was fine after all. Just grumpy about being wakened from his afternoon nap, I guess.

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After cleaning out my Dad's house, I have this advice: If you haven't used it in a year, throw it out!!!!.

Don't use old tea towels as pot mits. I have a huge saucepan I use for boiling pasta. One handle is long and doesn't get hot but the shorter one does. So being careful, I grabbed a tea towel to hold it as I took it off the stove and towards the sink.

Said tea towel has a frayed bottom and got caught on the pot stand on my gas stove so when I pulled the pot away, it got stuck and boiling water went all over both my hands. Yay.

Luckily I put the pot straight down, shoved my hands under running water and hollered for DH and managed to avoid any serious damage but I still have some impressive burns. Ironically the tea towel that caused the problem actually partly protected that hand so it isn't as badly burnt as the other one. Said tea towel is now a cleaning rag and not allowed anywhere near my stove.

Many decades ago, when I was a young girl growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, I was called to a neighbor's garage to remove the snake they found there. I was known as an animal lover. I remembered how my father would catch gopher/garden snakes to show us kids, so I used the same technique on this little snake. The snake was molting and moving very slowly. I picked it up holding behind the head and put it in a cardboard box which I closed up to show my parents what everyone was so excited about. What's the big deal? It is just a harmless little snake.

Maybe I should have studied snake identification a bit more, or at least learned that snakes are harder to identify when they are molting. When I picked up the box to carry it over to my Dad, I heard the distinctive sound of a baby rattlesnake: Tiny little tail bones rattling against the box.

No one ever asked me to remove a snake from their garage again, but if they had, I would definitely pay more attention to the specific type of snake I was moving.

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"The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are."

I was at the edge of the woods so no need to relocate. The racoons just sit in the traps and look at you like "What? I'll leave when I am good and ready'" I will tell you though, groundhogs are the angriest at being trapped and I am still shocked at the damage it did to the trap.

I come by my skunk whispering naturally. My grandfather used to live in a cottage out in the woods. One night, he heard a knock on his door, opened it and there was no one there. Until he looked down and here was a skunk with a can on his head. So Gramps bent down, gently removed the can, tossed it back out into the yard and shut the door. An hour later, another knock on the door. Same skunk, same can. So Gramps removed the can again and this time was smart enough to keep it inside as he closed the door. My Dad used to work at an outdoor school and there was a skunk that kept making a mess of one lunch area because the kids weren't the best at cleaning up after themselves. So Dad trapped the skunk and let it go, like I described. The kids were amazed. A couple of days later, they caught another one. Before my Dad arrived, the kids decided they could let it go themselves. Yeah, that didn't go so well.

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After cleaning out my Dad's house, I have this advice: If you haven't used it in a year, throw it out!!!!.

Aww, skunks are little sweeties! We had a few when we had land down in Arkansas. They'd have run of the place when we weren't there, and when we were there sitting on the deck watching the campfire, they'd come up from under the deck and warm themselves, too. I learned long ago to leave them alone and stay calm, you should be perfectly fine.

I have so much stupid to add to this thread, but I'll start with my friend, R.

I went to college with R. He invited me back to his family's house for a summer visit. We're all sitting around the bonfire (R, his brother, their parents, and me) and R decides to go inside to get sodas for everyone.

Fifteen minutes later we wonder where he is. The house is only two minutes away, if you're SLOW. So his brother goes after him.

Another fifteen minutes pass. We're trying to figure out where they are, so his parents and I head inside.

R dropped one can of soda. In his haste to pick it up, the others got shaken. Thinking it would be a bad idea to bring out shaken cans of soda, he set them on top of the table. Then turned and got fresh sodas. Turned back, knocked the shaken cans off the table. One of them flew up and hit the ceiling, the rest of them soon followed, covering EVERYTHING in the kitchen with soda.

Their house was an old schoolhouse. As such, the kitchen had been converted from offices and was very tall. And had the laundry in the corner. So all the clean clothes that had been sitting on top of the dryer to be sorted now had to be washed again.

When his brother came in to help, he grabbed for the broom behind the fridge. They were going to put a rag on it to try to clean the ceiling. R's brother promptly knocked off some jars of something off the top of the fridge. I can't remember what.

By the time his parents and I came in, it looked like the two of them had started a food fight and then got worried that they'd get caught. The mirrored guilt on their faces when the door opened was hilarious.

A few tips for dealing with skunks in traps: Grab an old blanket or beach towel and drape it over the trap. The dark will calm them down (of course, you don't need to do this in the middle of the night). Talk to them quietly in a calm voice, pitching it lower than you would normally speak, especially for women. Then, pick up the trap and put it in the back of your car. No, I don't recommend this; I did it, though.* When you are ready to let Pepe Le Pew out, wrinkle the towel/blanket back so you can open the trap door. Back away slowly and let Pepe mosey out on his own time.

My father accidentally caught a skunk in a live trap.He had been told that a skunk cannot spray if it cannot raise its tail.Since the trap kept the skunk's tail from raising, Dad thought all was safe.

So Dad decided to put the skunk in the trunk of the car and headed up the mountain to release the critter.

As it happens, skunks can indeed spray with their tails down. And it did so. Repeatedly. In the trunk of the car.

My Dad wasn't able to go out in public for a couple of weeks, and a month later people were *still* moving away from my poor mom at church!

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"I think her scattergun was only loaded with commas and full-stops, although some of them cuddled together for warmth and produced little baby colons and semi-colons." ~ Margo